See the GNU information manual for more information on these
topics. GRUB is under active development, and even more features
are planned for future releases.

In this brave GNU world, with vast acreage of cheap hard disk
and a glut of great free OSes available, you really need a flexible
and user-friendly boot loader to manage them all. Grab GRUB and
give it a go.

Wayne Marshall
(guinix@yahoo.com) is a UNIX programmer and technical consultant
currently living in Guinea, West Africa. When not grubbing about
with computers, he enjoys taking the pirogue for day trips to the
local islands near Conakry with his wife, Paula.

I "inherited" this computer from my son and had to perform system recovery. Now the machine does not want to reboot properly. Just after powering up instead of normal Windows XP loading process to take place all I get is a grub prompt.

I learned from this forum that Linux must have been loaded into a partition on my hard drive. And Grub must have been used to achieve this goal. Why the system recovery process does not wipe out everything clean? Why Grub persists and lingers somewhere on my machine?

I used the command chain: rootnoverify (hd0,0)/makeactive/ etc, etc and it gets me to Windows. But now i have to do it every time I start the computer.

Is there a way to get rid of Grub? I don't need it since I will only run Windows XP on this machine?

BTW, Grub does not seem to be installed properly anymore. If it is installed ok how can I get it change default=0 to default=saved as one of the post suggested to stop it from looking for other booting options.

All of the boot loaders apparently add bits and pieces to the Master Boot Loader. If you have a problem with this, it is because the MBR remains even thru changes in the partition table. I finally resorted to using the disk manager for my HD to give it a new MBR and strictly avoided installation of an overlay.

The main reason I still (yes, still) stick to LILO is the test kernel feature (-R, default kernel for next reboot). The last I checked, Grub didn't support this.

Ok, not everyone needs to install new kernels on remote systems, but that feature has saved me a number of times when the new kernel failed to load and all I had to do was ask to have the machine rebooted. The spartan interface is a small price to pay for the simplicity and this feature of Lilo.

Grub is realy the ugliest piece of software that I ever instaled on my machine. I am a "newbie" to linux and so have done a little stupid thing, adding a new partion without telling Grub. The result was that I had to reinstall that ugly shit, without having access to internet. It was not before few terrifying hours that I had a disc with linux in my hands supporting that shit Grub, so I could restore my machine and get access to my stuff...
I personalyhate that thing

I have my reservations about GRUB, too, and I'll admit, I've spent a few sessions turning the air blue after it hozed a disk.

But the previously abysmal docs are improving, and articles like this are helping a LOT!

You might try the old System Commander bootloader from VSystems, or the OS-BS Beta-2 loader found on the FreeBSD distro archives. They do a pretty good job of recognizing boot signatures, and being able to restore a munged MBR.

As for booting WinBlows, anyone THAT stupid gets no help from me.

mweep-(n):The sound of of a Sun Microsystems SPARCStation system bell.

With this attitude, learning Linux is going to be a long hard road for you. With power, comes flexibility and sometimes having to learn something new. Windows XP has it's own bootloader which has sent uncountable administrators into cardiac arrest and it's not OS independent. Your struggle with Grub might have more to do with not not yet having a good foundation in other areas. If you continue with your studies, hopefully you will one day look back and realize you just didn't have the whole picture.

Two things you might need to know for making a boot floppy disk for Fedora Linux. Tested on Fedora Core 4, probably true for all versions.

Fedora doesn't use "menu.lst" for the menu file. It uses "grub.conf". You can't put "grub.conf" on a msdos floppy due to the 8.3 filename restrictions. So in the directions above use:
"mkfs -t ext2 /dev/fd0" instead of "mkfs -t msdos /dev/fd0"
and of course change the mount option to "-t ext2".

Then make a menu file named "grub.conf" and put it in the "/boot/grub" directory.
--
Mark Nienberg

I have a problem with dual booting. I have 2 hard disks. On one I have installed win Xp and on other I have installed Fedora 4. now if want to booth either of the operating system. I go to bias settings disable the drive which has other operating system and then reboot. But this is a awkward and inconvenient all the time. I know GRUB entry can solve this problem. Could you please guide me on this? The drive on which fedora is installed is partitioned into 8 each containing /, usr, home etc… both the hard disk is 120GB. My expertise level as Linux user is beginner so please be explicit in your guidance.

I had the same problem, but I got it fixed like that.
Fedora can only be instaled on the master drive (if you have IDE) but afterwards you can plug it back to slave. Grub will be automatically installed on the drive where you have your Fedora system on.
this drive is hd0 in Grub. So trying to boot your WinXp install on the other drive needs following section in your menu.lst :

I wanted to repartition the hard drive. But the existing Linux partition was after C Drive and before D drive of windows. I had deleted the linux partition via windows and claimed the space.

However this resulted in a stage2 grub boot problem.

Having struggled for 4 Hrs (I am an amateur in Linux & Grub) I figured out the following:

1) Create a partition at the end hard drive and format it to FAT32.
2) Create the following folder structure
E:/boot/grub
3) Download the STAGE1 & STAGE2 executables from the website ftp://alpha.gnu.org/gnu/grub/
grub-0.94.-i386-pc.tgz

Created the following files:
E:/boot/grub/menu.lst
Saved the following files from the zip:
E:/boot/grub/stage1
E:/boot/grub/stage2

3) Issued the following command when grub was failing to load the STAGE2
install (hd0,2)/boot/grub/stage1 (hd0,2) (hd0,2)/boot/grub/stage2 0x8000 p (hd0,2)/boot/grub/menu.lst

I really screwed up -- I changed the monitor resolution settings in GNOME beyond the scan lines of the monitor attached to the box. What can I do from the grub prompt to reset the monitor resolution and boot? Anyone at all? Thanks. -J

If you don't have any chance to get to the console with this problem (ctrl-alt-f1 for example) try booting into a recovery mode via Grub. If your grub menu doesn't include a recovery option, you'll have to switch to the command line. Try a kernel line like:

Just to share what worked for me. After moving and resizing XP and its Recovery partitions on a cheap preloaded CPU box and installing Linux RH 9 in extended partitions, Grub would not boot XP with the normal "rootnoverify ..., chainloader +1, makeactive" comamnds, like XP had to have the MBR.

I made an XP boot floppy as instructed at the MS site--"format a:" in XP--then copy the three files (ntldr, ntdetect.com, boot.ini). But sure the floppy boots XP. (XP's format command evidently puts something in the floppy's boot record.)

I moved XP partitions one more time (Partition Magic 8.0 diskettes) to make room for a small (30Meg, could be smaller) Partition 1 at the beginning of the hard file. Edit boot.ini on the floppy, bumping the "...partition(X)" number by 1. Boot XP from the floppy.

Do the same thing to tiny Partition 1 you did to the floppy, "format :", copy three files including the working boot.ini from the diskette.

Now the "rootnoverify (hd0,0), chainloader +1 ..." sequence to the tiny partition works. At some point above you may want to CD boot Linux and use "fdisk" to be sure the partitions are in consecutive order.

I welcome any comments. Someone may know a reason why this procedure is bad. Please let me know.

Sorry, I just can find better words to put it :-). Back in 2002 I tried Grub on a system upgrade and it totally screwed my system, no linux and no windows!!!. That happened in two ocassions in spite of me having extensive LILO experience and having done countless linux upgrades and installations.

LILO was a bit cryptic but it was relatively simple and worked all the time. GRUB has a nice interface to select but to get that working you have to endure cryptic nomenclature that is confusing considering the standard that was already set forth (HDA1, HDB2, etc.).

FDISK /MBR ? well, let me tell you, that does not always work. At least it didn't when GRUB gropped my MBR. The Windows rescue console (XP installation CD)? my God, stay away from it for your own sake! it only made things worse.

My advise: before making any Linux/Grub installation make yourself a favour, make a bootable floppy (as shown in this article), Go to the Symantec site and search for 'head.zip', download that wonderful DOS utility and use it to back up your MBR and your first head safely to the same floppy disk. If anything goes wrong (and with GRUB I would say the chances are great) you can use the same utility to put back the original MBR (and it always works).

Back then since my MBR was already fried it was "late" to use the utility. I had to use a Linux rescue CD to use the dd command to copy the backup boot sector (I forgot what the offset is) and manually copy it to the active boot sector. Then I got my Windows (and by God I was never so glad to see my WinXP boot screen, and without GRUB!!!) running, a fresh resurected MBR and used the utility to back it up just in case things turn sour one day.

NOw 2-4 years later I was hopping GRUB had overcome those things, WRONG!!! I think it only serves to scare newbies (and oldies!) away from Linux. GRUB people & DIstro makers, get that monster more fool proof.

So far I have not found answers to my new attempt: WinXP on SDA (1st SATA) and Fedora Core 4 on SDB (2nd SATA). I certainly do not want to undergo the same nightmare and grief again.

The greedheads at Symantec must have gotten wind that their little utility was useful, because it is no longer available. But check around, anyway; it may be available on one or more of the MBR and partition hackers' sites. There are also several "clones" of the program that predate Symantec's use of it. Generally speaking, they're either scripts to the XNIX "dd" command, or disk image copiers.

I'm sure HEAD.EXE will be available again from Symantec as a $49.95 megaprogram with about 500 MB of bloatware.

Symantec: We know that amateurs developed it. We know it's in the public domain. But we recompiled it, so pay up, suckas!

Boy I am so agreeing with you about GRUB. What strangeness. I was all over setting up dual boot configs with LILO, now this. I had to work hard to change my FC5 install so that GRUB didn't eat a partition. Then there was the problem that the default boot-up after Linux install was to Linux, not XP. Because of the GRUB graphical command interface, the short default timeout of 5 seconds would expire before my LCD could sync to the image (character command interface of LILO never had this problem). I had to learn a lot about GRUB in a hurry to restore my ability to boot into XP (editing grub.conf). FC5 install never prompted me to make a boot floppy, in fact never gave me the option not to mess up my MBR, it just trashes the MBR with GRUB.

Now I would like to run screaming back to LILO, but can't seem to get it to work. Installing the LILO rpm is no problem. However, making a boot floppy with LILO seems to just put my machine into an infinite reboot loop. Using LILO on the hard drive makes Linux unbootable (and it can't be repaired without reinstalling Linux, fortunately XP is still bootable under LILO). I can't figure out what's wrong - I use the exact same LILO setup I've used a hundred times, but it leads to a kernel panic during boot. I can't run it solely from the floppy either, because vmlinuz is now too big to fit on a floppy. Fedora seems to be moving in the wrong direction on this.

I have two SATA disks, both 250GB, and first disk is loaded with OEM Windows XP. I then add a second disk to install Fedora Core 5. FC5 was installed to the second disk without problem, but after reboot, it starts XP like there is no Linux nor GRUB installation.

In order to make it work, I did the following.

1. Install FC5 to the second disk (sdb) and put the loader to your boot partition, /dev/sdb1. Don't put it to the MBR.
2. After installation, boot with 'linux rescue'
3. Make a boot file, boot.lnx, by the following command.

dd if=/dev/sdb1 of=boot.lnx bs=512 count=1

(Note: I don't have a diskette, so (probably why) FC5 didn't ask me to make a boot disk.)

4. Make a copy of the boot.lnx to your XP file system. You can copy to a diskette if you have a diskette drive. I mount one of the FAT32 by doing 'mount /dev/sda2 /tmpmnt'. Use command 'fdisk -l' to find available devices.

"Grub would not boot XP with the normal "rootnoverify ..., chainloader +1, makeactive" comamnds, like XP had to have the MBR."

and proceeded to involve another primary partition, etc.

In fact Grub will boot XP with "rootnoverify ..., chainloader +1, makeactive" you just have to update the partition numbers in XPs boot.ini after moving partions around.

To my best understanding now, an install of XP (or format /s) places a secondary boot loader on the partition BR which says, "Goto ntldr (or whatever filename) in my root," which will read boot.ini.

Normally you would think that once the boot records have found the OS's loader, you're done with partition numbers. But I understand (at least tonight) that XP also requires correct boot numbers in boot.ini. Double updating.

I had a dual partition with winxp and red hat 9. My "friend" tired to remove linux with partition magic and now all the pc does is go to grub prompt. I have tried to reinstall linux after formating the whole hard disk but still face the same problem. I have also tried the commands on this page. Nothing seems to work. Please Help !!!!!

"dual partition" means at least two different partitions, one with XP, another with Linux.
"after formating the whole hard disk" would mean XP is now gone.

I think you get the Grub prompt because Gurb is still on the Master Boot Record but it can't find its "splash" screen, etc. normally in the /boot/grub directory on the partition Grub thinks is it's "root".

A clean install of Linux should fix it. This time, be sure to make the Linux boot diskette during the install. If still problems, I suggest you study the "info grub" material on a working Linux system (or on the Internet), poke around at your grub prompt with "find /gurb/grub.conf" (or "find /boot.int" if XP is still around) type "help" to the grub prompt, work out the commands which boot something from the grub prompt, then put those commands into the grub.conf file.

Download SYSlinux from http://syslinux.zytor.com/download.php.Uncompress it and go to the folder memdisk ther will be a file named memdisk.it is actually a kernel that can take a floppy disk image as initrd and boot from that image.So put the file memdisk and the floppy disk image in your boot folder and add the lines:

I was able to get Grub to work on my two drive system but I needed a trick to do it. I ran into a problem on my first attempt: On my system XP is already on hda. I loaded Linux on hdb and created the /boot partition as the first partition on hdb (hdb1). (This is a small partition entirely within the 1024 cylinder limit.) I loaded Grub on this partition, then did the dd trick to copy the boot sector of hdb1 to a file that I placed on c:\ (on hda2) and set up my boot.ini accordingly. It didn't work - it just types "GRUB" in the upper-left corner.

I got an idea for a solution after reading this great article. First, I was finally able to get my Linux installation to boot from hdb1 with the Grub boot floppy.

I happen to have a small FAT32 partition on my first drive (hda5, which I created a long time ago with Partition Magic), so I used the "Grub boot floppy" technique to make hda5 a "Grub boot partition". I then did the dd trick for hda5, and copied that boot sector file to c:\. Now I can selectively boot to XP on hda2, or to the grub boot partition on hda5. Just add menu.lst to hda5 and we have a complete working solution. Once control is with Grub the problems with the second drive go away.

Hi!,
In my pc there is three os. linux,win98 and winxp. Now my proble
is when I start my pc there is only two option is shown.linux is not there.but linux in installed. I hope there is problem in grub or booting proble.
So, plz give me help.

I often walk away while my system boots up, to drink a coffee or watch some TV, especially when I have to re-boot windows, yawn!!

Is it possible to set GRUB to boot the last operating system selected when it times out each time. Or do you have to sit there with the finger on the arrow key and enter button each time regardless of operating system?

You can also have GRUB save the last loaded system as the default for the next boot. Change the "default=0" line to "default=saved" and add the "savedefault" command (no arguments) as the last command in each title section. When you switch to the savedefault mode, the first title section will be the default on the first boot. GRUB saves the current selection just before initiating the boot sequence. By using the savedefault command in two or more title sections and leaving it out of one or more title sections you could create a menu that would allow the default to switch between some systems but never be set for others.

Wow. my computer (seemingly) randomly booted GRUB after I asked Fedora to restart. If I hadn't found this web page, I would have had to reinstall the damn thing all over again. Thanks to you for the thorough instructions on using GRUB; it was the first time I'd ever encountered it!
Signed: a (not timid enough) newbie.

Thanks a lot this page has helped my get safe boot into windows. I am having a dual boot system with linux and windows2000. Unfortunately linux partition has been corrupted and because of this windows is not able to boot and it is stopping at "grub>" prompt. I have just used the commands you have given in this page to boot

Use windows xp bootable cd to boot the system, when asked for, press r to enter recovery console.
Simply use bootcfg command with the proper command swtch(think should be restore) to maintain your original MBR.

The Grub Boot Floppy I created works great. I have WinXP on the Primary Master Hard Drive and Fedora Core 3 on a separate hard drive. I did not let the Fedora install load Grub onto (hd0,0), so I followed this article's instructions and made the boot floppy. The floppy works perfectly. Here is a copy of the menu.lst file:

I copied the grub directory from the floppy to the hard drive at /boot
using cp -Rp /mnt/test/boot/grub /boot
All the files are in the correct location on the hard drive.

When I boot the computer without the floppy, I select the 2nd hard drive and it boots to the grub prompt. The menu.lst does not appear and when I try to manually enter the commands that work with the floppy, only error messages appear.

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